The site is built on a customised WordPress platform and, in terms of web accessibility, it’s clearly a great piece of work with obvious care and attention paid to:

Semantic markup

JavaScript that degrades gracefully

Keyboard accessibility

Compatibility with a wide range of browsers and assistive software

A design that is still eminently usable without images

And there’s plenty of nice touches for site visitors, like focus styling, page summaries and visual tools (i.e. alternative style sheets). We are especially impressed by the exemplary heading structure across the site and the design’s liquid layout. Another nice touch is the fact when the “Remove all backgrounds” widget is clicked, its text immediately changes to “Restore all backgrounds”. A definite plus point for widget usability.

Digging deeper though, a few niggly issues begin to surface. For example, the content link colour has a contrast of only 5.2:1, which falls well below the 7:1 required for anything other than large text by WCAG 2.0 (SC 1.4.6). The checkbox-style navigation poses potential confusion with the greyed-out visited links looking disabled and unclickable. And what about the breadcrumb trail overlapping the border image? In short, it’s this lack of attention to the fine details that lets the site down.

The use of language throughout the site is another contentious issue. Section headings in the navigation, like “Categories” or “Archives”; are not descriptive enough. Perhaps “News and Articles” and “Settlement Agreements” would have introduced more meaning and better usability? And, handy as they are, the list of Page Tools are poorly labelled; rather than clearly state what they are, we’re given representative terms instead: e.g. “Basic Page Theme”. What’s “basic”? It’s actually high-contrast, large type.

Finally: the visual design. The colours are sombre and fitting for a corporate site but there’s just no wow factor. That said, it does not detract from this site’s sheer quality or its AAA achievement. Definitely a site that could - and should - be used as an example of accessible design. Web design students… start taking notes.

Following review, the Law Office of Lainey Feingold site was judged eligible for an Award Level of “Quality Universal”. Congratulations, Mike!

9 Responses to: “Law Office of Lainey Feingold”

Thanks guys. Certainly a very thorough, and I think fair, review. I must admit the short headings and navigation texts you mentioned are all me. I hate long ones that wrap. It’s a personal thing, but the clean visual appearance of one or two short words instead of full blown — albeit descriptive — text appeals to the designer inside me. I don’t have an issue with the breadcrumb position. It’s not an oversight. It was intentional, that’s why it fades out almost completely. I tried moving it out but I didn’t like it as much. Sorry you don’t like that one, lol. Regarding the content link color… I don’t know what to say. I thought that so many folks, myself included, looked at that stuff for the whole “official” thing with the WAI I am shocked and saddened it appears that’s an oversight. I could have sworn we checked that! I will have to pick a darker color if Lainey wants me to. (That’ll be on me, Lainey.)

You guys really had me going at first glance. I saw the star but I mostly noted the word “Timeless.” I was thinking, Timeless, no freaking way. There’s no such thing as a Timeless site, I thought to myself, that’s just for incentive. Anyway, I totally agree, the site doesn’t have nearly enough WOW for anything like that.

As always, a terrific design and look from Mike. And also, as always, a highly accessible and standards compliant design and coding.

@Mike: I am curious about one thing if you read this comment, and this is just a subjective thing, not critical at all; What process went into deciding on the left justified layout? Just curious, because I am a big fan of centering the layout, but as I said, that’s totally subjective.

Nice work as usual Mike. I know you are working on other things and going in different directions, but the web world misses the monthly websites that you used to produce!

Congrats. Nice work. This may be a stupid question, but where is it that someone can get a WAI report like the one for this site that’s linked to from the index page here? I looked on the WAI site following the navigation links, but couldn’t locate any info. Before anyone suggests I didn’t look hard enough, I’m legally blind and use a screen reader to access sites. I’m just curious about where someone can submit a site for a WAI report because I have a sighted friend that does accessible web design and thought I’d tell him about it.

WAI don’t normally audit a site in this fashion. In this particular case, it was part of a practical implementation of the new guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0) to prove that they could be applied in the Real World. We do, however, have a list of online resources that your friend could use.

Thanks for the link to the resources list. Most of the list does have to do with accessibility, but what pray tell does a pagerank checker have to do with web accessibility? Blind and disabled folks don’t give a hoot what a site’s pagerank is. All they care about is whether or not they can access the site without too much hassle. Plus, pagerank checkers violate google TOS.